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Monday, July 13, 2009

There Can Be No Justice In Empathy

Your Honor, I am very concerned about your desire to have empathy as a jurist.

Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution states “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States…”

Empathy isn’t mentioned there, nor in any other part of Article III.

And in some prominent cases adjudicated at the Supreme Court level where a form of prejudicial empathy was the rule above equal justice of the law, tragic rulings came down:

Dred Scott was NOT given justice, but rather the opponents of his case received the empathy that became a standard presumed law until the Fourteenth Amendment.

In Plessy v. Ferguson, a false empathy was schilled out to try to maintain a status quo while still not violating the constitution. But America had to learn that “Separate but Equal” can never truly be equal. If the Supreme Court had ruled with true justice, the farces of the Jim Crow laws would have been dealt with and done away with a lot sooner!

Again, in 1944, prejudicial empathy was applied when Fred Korematsu evade internment for being Japanese. Had true and equal justice been applied, this nation would have known what a horrible indecency it had done, again, because of racial discrimination.

Finally, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Justice was applied as the rule of law as one of the first steps in uniting the divided races of this nation. The Supreme Court didn’t apply empathy at all.

Why have the examples given been primarily about racial issues? With the nomination of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, race has become an issue. Not because the citizenry of this nation is overwhelmingly racist, but because she herself has made racist comments and even ruled in appellate cases in an empathetic way based on race.

Political correctness and affirmative action has brought this country to a point in history where it is now racist to examine and criticize someone for behaving with a racist skew. At what point will we wake up from the dream Martin Luther King had about judging someone based on character and merit? When will we wake up LONG ENOUGH FOR THE DREAM TO BECOME REALITY?

There are no illusions about this, folks. She will more likely than not get confirmed and be an Associate Justice. But will she adjudicate with empathy or justice in the law?

Remember that the founders of this nation listed many grievances against King George in the Declaration of Independence. Not once did they call for empathy. Justice or Liberty was what they wanted and what they knew they deserved.

The U.S. Constitution didn’t set up anything based on empathy, nor did the Framers even think of empathy when debating the elements and attributes therein. Why?

For one reason and one reason only – JUSTICE IS BLIND, EMPATHY IS NOT.